Pass Interference

by Natalie Brock

  He’d feel differently in the morning, at least that’s what she kept telling herself.

  Sara headed back toward her old dorm room. She fished around in her bag, hoping she had the key on her—and there it was, still dangling from her keychain, right next to the key to Philip’s room. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. The room seemed so much smaller than she remembered.

  Her heart felt heavy, and her head ached as she sat down on the bed. She was at such a loss right now. Philip was her first real boyfriend, and she felt like she was failing him. There was literally nothing she could do for him except pray. She sighed, thinking about how life had been so much easier when she was her own person. Before she fell in love, she had only herself to think about. Now, things were different. She was connected to Philip in so many ways. She hurt when he hurt. She was sad when he was sad, and delirious when he was happy. He was a part of her now, and she was completely wrapped up in him.

  Exhaustion set in, both emotionally and physically, so she peeled off her clothes and decided to shower and go to bed. Tomorrow was a new day. Hopefully Philip wouldn’t turn her away again.

  »»•««

  Somewhere during the night, Sara was awakened by a faint sound. She sat up groggily and listened closely in the stillness of the night. It was the muffled sound of her cell phone’s ringtone. She got out of bed and dug her phone out of her purse. Switching on the desk light, she looked at the display. 4 missed calls. She must have been really tired to sleep through the phone ringing. She accessed the call log and saw that all the calls were from Philip. She breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the callback key.

  “Where are you?” Philip demanded as soon as he answered the phone. His voice was filled with panic.

  “I’m in my dorm room.”

  “God, Sara,” he exhaled into the phone, “I was getting ready to call campus security.”

  “I’m sorry, Philip. I-I didn’t mean to give you one more thing to worry about. You said you wanted to be alone.”

  “I did. I do. Hell, I don’t know what I want.” There was a long pause while Sara waited for him to continue. “I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier.”

  Sara suppressed a cry in her throat. She was so touched that he even gave that any thought under the circumstances. “I know. It’s okay Philip. You’re going through something awful and I understand you need some space.”

  “You’re better to me than I deserve. And I’m pretty useless to you.”

  “Don’t you dare ever say that again! You are not useless,” she scolded. It absolutely killed her to hear him talk that way. “You can do anything you put your mind to.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not my mind that’s keeping me from playing football.”

  She struggled to find some comforting words. “Is there…Is there anything I can do for you? Philip, do you want me to come…to come home?”

  “No, not tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Of course. Philip? I love you.”

  She paused for a reply, but he had already hung up.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Sara didn’t have a huge assortment of clothes to begin with, and at this point, there weren’t many clothes left in her dorm room closet. Most of her clothes had migrated to Philip’s dorm room. So the next morning, she threw on the same shirt and jeans she wore the day before, topped off by her zippered EFU hoodie, and she headed out. She was so anxious to see Philip, yet a little afraid of how he’d feel this morning, of what his mood would be like, and whether she could find any words that would comfort him somehow. How could she give him encouragement when things seemed so hopeless to him right now? There had to be something she could do. There just had to be!

  Instead of going directly to Philip’s dorm, she found herself taking a detour and walking into the sports complex. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know who she wanted to see or what she wanted to say, but she wound up outside the baseball coach’s office.

  A tall, thin, black man was standing behind his desk. He had just ended a phone call, and now he turned his attention to his laptop. Leaning over, he tapped on his keyboard. When she rapped on the open door, he looked up.

  Sara glanced at the nameplate on the desk. “Coach Williams? I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute.”

  “We don’t have no female softball team here.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. That’s not why I’m here,” she said, nervously tugging on the bottom of her open hoodie. “I wanted to talk to you about Philip Mason. Do you know him?”

  “Sure. Everybody knows him.” The coach looked at her quizzically. “If you’re looking for an introduction, I gotta tell you, this ain’t no matchmaking service, you know.”

  Sara laughed a little and stepped farther inside the office. “No, that’s not it. See, my name is Sara, and Philip is…he’s my boyfriend and I’m sure you heard about his injury.”

  “Ah. Yeah. Lousy break. We’re all pretty upset about it.”

  “We are too. So, I was just wondering. How different is baseball from football?” On the way to Naples, Philip told Sara that he was interested in baseball before he started playing football. She also remembered Philip’s father suggesting baseball as a backup plan, so she figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

  The coach let out a hearty laugh until he saw Sara wasn’t joking. “It’s completely different. What are you getting at, young lady?”

  Maybe she needed to rephrase the question. “Well, I mean, throwing the ball. If someone is good at throwing a football, wouldn’t he also be good at pitching a baseball?”

  The coach eyed Sara without answering, so Sara continued. “I mean, pitchers do a lot less running than quarterbacks, don’t they?”

  The coach nodded slowly. “I think I get where you’re going with this.”

  “I’m sure you know that Philip is a really talented athlete,” Sara asserted. “Even if he can’t play football, there has to be another sport he could play that wouldn’t be so hard on his knee.”

  Taking a seat behind his desk, the coach bobbed his head. “In the American League, pitchers never have to hit unless there’s interleague play, so the amount of running they do is minimal.”

  A little smile crossed Sara’s lips, thinking this could turn out to be a brilliant idea. “Could you maybe talk to him?”

  “If he’s interested, he’d need to try out for the team.”

  Her gut twisted as she remembered Philip saying he didn’t pursue baseball when he was younger because he didn’t make the team. But that was a long time ago and he was a seasoned athlete now. “You have pitching coaches, right?” The coach nodded. “I just don’t want him to give up hope.”

  The coach finally smiled at Sara. “Sure, I’ll talk to him.”

  Sara exhaled. “Thank you, Coach. Thank you so much!”

  »»•««

  Sara used her key to unlock the door to Philip’s dorm room. When she entered the bedroom, she was surprised to see an older man with him. Philip was sitting up on the bed wearing an EFU T-shirt and shorts, and the older man was sitting in a chair next to the bed, wrapping Philip’s knee.

  When Philip saw her, a fleeting smile crossed his face before he turned his attention back to the man. The man turned around and looked at Sara.

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said. “Should I come back later?”

  “No, stay,” Philip said, holding out his hand. “This is my girlfriend, doc. Sara, this is Dr. Garino, the sports doctor for the school’s athletic program.”

  She approached the two men and took Philip’s hand. She nodded at the doctor and recognized him as the man who had taken care of Philip yesterday after he collapsed. “How’s he doing, doctor?”

  The doctor looked at Philip, and Philip nodded his consent to discuss his condition with Sara. “We were just talking about his surgery.”

  “So you’re going through with it?” Sara asked Philip.

  He shook his head from side to side.
“I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Your MRI clearly shows you reinjured your ACL. You should have the surgery, Philip. This isn’t just about playing sports. It’s about having full function of your knee.”

  “Hang on.” Philip interrupted the doctor. “What do you mean by full function? A minute ago, you said my knee will never be what it once was.”

  “No, what I said is that you have a better chance of playing football again if you have the surgery than if you don’t,” the doctor answered calmly. “But let’s put football and sports aside for a minute. You need to think about the rest of your life—activities of everyday living, walking, light jogging at some point. Throwing the ball around with your kids someday. If you don’t have the surgery, you might very well be limping your entire life. You’re too young and healthy to start out with a disability.”

  Releasing Sara’s hand, Philip leaned back against his pillow. She could see he was disheartened. “There’s no guarantees, doc. You said so yourself.”

  “What I said is that all operations have a risk factor. I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to play again, but your prospects are better with the surgery. I can’t tell you what to do, Phil, but I can advise you. If you were my son, I’d give you the same advice.”

  The doctor secured the ACE bandage on Philip’s knee and got up. He placed a blood pressure cuff back into a medical bag that was sitting open on top of the nightstand.

  “Can I ask a question, doctor?” Sara looked from the doctor to Philip, who appeared to be skeptical before he even heard what she was going to ask. “Doctor, suppose Philip wanted to play some other sport—you know, down the road, like you were saying—something less punishing than football. Could he do that?”

  The doctor glanced at Philip and then back at Sara. “Well, most other team sports don’t have three hundred and fifty pound men pulling on their opponents’ limbs and trying to crush their bones, so I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. Still, I don’t want to make any predictions until after the surgery.”

  “Will you be performing the surgery?” she asked.

  The doctor smiled. “No, I’m one of the university’s sports doctors, not a surgeon. We have a top orthopedic surgeon lined up if Phil says yes. The surgery would be performed at the Orlando Medical Center.”

  Somehow that didn’t give Sara a lot of confidence. “Should…shouldn’t Philip maybe go to New York or Chicago or Philadelphia or…or the Mayo Clinic for the operation?”

  “That would be up to Philip and his family. However, I can tell you that we have the utmost faith in Dr. Patel. Again, I’d trust him to operate on my own son.” The doctor patted Philip’s shoulder. “Call me if you have any questions.”

  After the doctor left, Sara sat down on the edge of Philip’s bed and ran her fingers through his hair. “Can I get you anything? You hungry?”

  He surprised her by pushing her arm away. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He crossed his arms. “Look, I don’t need someone to ask the doctor questions or to wait on me or clean up after me or feed me or wheel me around. You can leave.”

  Sara’s jaw dropped. “Philip, what are you—”

  “Just go. Just go and leave the key.”

  Sara’s eyes widened. When Philip said she should leave, it felt like she got punched in the stomach. She thought they were past this, but she had apparently overstepped her bounds again, at least in Philip’s opinion. Blinking back tears, she spoke defiantly. “Fine, if that’s what you want, I’ll go.” She got up, pulled the key out of the pocket of her hoodie, took it off the key ring, and slammed it down on the nightstand. “But only because you asked me to.” She started to walk to the door, but stopped and turned back around. Injury or no injury, she wasn’t going down without a fight. “I get that you’re angry and scared and in pain. I’m just as worried as you are, but I’m tired of you taking your frustration out on me. I don’t deserve it!”

  Sara took a deep breath to calm herself. She thought she saw tears in Philip’s eyes, and her heart was breaking for the both of them. She took a step closer. “Look, maybe it wasn’t my place to ask those questions. I’m not your wife, but I’m also not a fair weather girlfriend, Philip. I’m not with you just for the good times.”

  “What good times? There haven’t been any good times,” he shot back. “I’ve been a gimp since you met me. You should go find a guy who’s whole.”

  Sara’s lips parted when she realized what Philip was doing. This was a preemptive strike, like the time he got rid of his previous tutor because he was afraid of failing. Except this time, he was being a martyr, telling her to leave because he didn’t want his disability to drag her down. She shook her head sadly.

  Taking a seat on Philip’s bed, she cocked her head to get his attention, but Philip avoided making eye contact with her. “I have news for you, mister. I’m already with a guy who’s whole!” His lack of response told Sara he needed more convincing, so she softened her tone and said, “I have a confession to make, Philip. And after I make it, if you still want me to leave, I will.”

  She took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you asked me on the way to Naples about the moment that changed my life the most? Well, I lied. It didn’t have anything to do with my family. It was the moment I met you. Something inside me came alive, and it wasn’t because you’re gorgeous or an athlete or one of the most popular guys on campus. I hate those kinds of guys.” Philip glanced at her, and she thought she detected a little smile. She felt her throat start to close up, and she wasn’t even sure she could finish the rest of her confession. Her voice grew raspy. “It was because of who you are on the inside. I fell in love with your soul, Philip, the guy who wrote those essays. The man who has a strong moral character and loves his family. And it doesn’t matter to me whether you can run twenty miles an hour or two miles an hour or no miles an hour. So don’t tell me not to ask the doctor questions or see if I can get you something to eat or drink. I care about you and if I want to do things for you, then I’m going to do them, dammit.” She hit the bed with her palm for emphasis. “And if you don’t like it, well, then okay. I’ll go.”

  Sara paused to gauge Philip’s reaction, but when there wasn’t one, she started to get up. Philip reached out and placed his hands on her hips. “Sara wait. I don’t want you to go,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Please stay.”

  Her lip trembled as she gazed into his eyes. They were filled with so much sincerity, so much love. She ran her hand over his hair and nodded.

  “I can be such a prick sometimes,” he said sadly.

  “Don’t say that,” she objected.

  “It’s true. I…it’s just been really hard not knowing what’s gonna happen. I don’t mean to take it out on you. I don’t want to be just one more person who hurts you or disappoints you.”

  “You’re not, Philip.” She felt herself choking up. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not okay. I know I don’t deserve you, Sara,” he said tearfully, “and I don’t know why you put up with my bull, but I’m so grateful to have you by my side. And I was lying when I said there haven’t been any good times. They’ve all been good. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You are. And I never want to lose you. I want you in my life forever.” Pulling Sara on top of him, he held her tight and tenderly kissed her lips. He rolled her onto her back and continued to kiss her.

  Sara gently pressed on his chest. “Wait, I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” she said.

  Nuzzling his nose on hers, he chuckled. “You need to quit while you’re ahead,” he joked, before capturing her lips again.

  She pressed her hands against his chest. “Wait, what does that mean?”

  “It means I want to make love to you. And nothing’s gonna stop me. Not even a bum knee.”

  He slipped her hoodie off her shoulders and then pulled her blouse up over her head and tossed it onto the floor. He gently urged her onto her side, her back to
his front, so he could unhook her bra. He drew her closer to him so that her body conformed to his. She could feel his warm breath bathing the back of her neck as he kissed his way from one bare shoulder to the other. She didn’t know what to feel first, his kisses behind her or his caresses in front of her, as he held her across her waist with one arm while the other hand toyed with both breasts at once. The arm that wrapped around her front dropped lower and lower, diving inside her shorts until he found her sweet spot.

  Keeping her on edge, she squirmed under his touch as he applied a light uneven pressure that, little by little, grew firmer and steadier, driving her out of her mind. She writhed with pleasure, her movements guiding him as he manually brought her to orgasm, once, twice, three times. She didn’t even have time to catch her breath between convulsions. She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. His eyes were half closed when she turned her whole body to face him. She gently slipped his shorts down, taking extra care not to disturb his bandage. It was Philip’s turn to be on the receiving end.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Over the next couple weeks, Philip spent a lot of time in physical therapy, trying to improve his upper body strength while keeping his lower half limber and his circulation flowing. He joked that Sara was the best physical therapy program, because making love to her gave him the best workouts of all.

  When he wasn’t working on his body, Sara attempted to stimulate his brain. She tried to get him to focus on his studies, but it was nearly impossible. He was too distracted over the decision he had yet to make, and that was whether to go through with the surgery.

  Sara thought it was kind of a no-brainer, and it surprised her that Philip was waffling so much. Up to now, he’d always seemed so sure of himself, so decisive. But once his future became cloudy, his whole world was thrown off balance, and it changed him. Even though Sara believed that having surgery was the right choice, she knew that Philip didn’t want to be told what to do, so she mostly kept her opinion to herself. This decision had to be his. He had to be comfortable with it.